Paradox Men

The Paradox Men has become a classic in the SF field, for good reason. It was first published as "Flight Into Yesterday", in the May 1949 Startling Stories. This edition is slightly expanded and revised. The Paradox Men is still Harness's most famous and most respected novel. The plot is complicated, but consistent, logical, and thematically sound. The characters are two-dimensional but interesting and involving. The action is well-done, and the scientific ideas are sometimes philosophical and thoughtful, and at other times wild, implausible, but still engaging. The basic story is of a Thief, Alar, who has appeared in Imperial America 5 years prior to the action of the story, with no memory of his past or identity. The Thieves work underground against the repressive society, using tech invented by their mysterious, dead, founder, Kennicot Muir. The key piece of Thief tech is armor which protects them against high velocity weapons (like projectile weapons), but not against swords and knives. Thus fencing is again a major skill. (Herbert swiped this notion for Dune, of course.) At the time of the action, various threads are converging: the plans of Imperial America to attack its Eurasian enemy, the Toynbee society's attempts to avoid the continuing historical cycle of civilizations rising and falling (they believe that the coming war will bring Toynbee Civilization 21 to an end: the next one will be Toynbee 22, hence Harness' original title (never used on a published version): Toynbee Twenty-Two), the completion of an experimental FTL starship, the relationship between the evil leaders of Imperial America and Keiris Muir, the enslaved widow of Kennicot Muir, and her attraction to Alar, the predictions of the computer enhanced human called The Meganet Mind (or the Microfilm Mind in the original). What a horrible sentence: but trying to summarize Harness can do that to you. Everything comes to a head with a trip to the surface of the Sun, and then a much stranger trip ... I recommend it highly. It seems comparable in many ways to its near contemporary Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination: Harness probably had a more original mind than Bester's, and his themes seem a bit more ambitious, but he really couldn't write with him -- and I think it is because of the writing (both prose and pace) that the manic energy of the Bester book is more successfully sustained. Still, The Paradox Men remains a powerful and interesting novel, and such scenes as the final selfless act of Keiris are unmatched in SF.

'The Paradox Men' seems almost to be the Brigadoon of SF. It gets republished about every 15 years or so, generally with a foreword by some reputable author saying how great it is, and what a shame that it has been out of print. And they are quite right. 'The Paradox Men' is quite a short novel, but it simply bursts with ideas, like Van Vogt, but Harness is much better at integrating the diverse strands into a coherent and wonderous tapestry. Imperial America (remember this was written about 50 years before George the Worst oozed onto the scene), Toynbee's ideas on cyclic history, the re-appearance of swords for personal defence, debt slavery, sociology on a solar energy mining station. a ship that circumnavigated the universe(accumulating sufficient mass to move galaxies), and evolutionary change. Operatically, there are masks, hidden identities and torture. We sweep between the highs(a ball at the Imperial Court) and lows(bond slavery). Approaching the end, World War III (or perhaps IV or V) is happening, yet Harness still manages a hope fulled end. The writing is also that of a literate craftsman, well-versed in the use of such tools. (Harness was a lawyer and writes well). I think he was a patent lawyer, so his knowldge of science is good enough for sf, but he brings a sure grasp of the humanities to the mix as well. "The Paradox Men" should be considered essential in a well rounded SF collection. Besides, it is just such a good read.

I picked up this book because it had been compared to Alfred Bester's "The Stars, My Destination," one of my favorite sci-fi novels, AND because it is listed as one of the Top 100 sci-fi novels in David Pringle's excellent overview book. Happily, I found the comparison to be a fair one, and the rating to be just. This is one terrific science fiction novel, as fast paced and colorful as the Bester novel, and featuring a similar use of colorful characters and extravagant imagination. It is really quite impressive how Charles Harness manages to incorporate some fantastic surprise or bit of mind-blowing scientific hypothesizing into every single chapter. Einsteinian theories of the universe, Toynbeean history and non-Aristotelian philosophy are all mixed into a swashbuckling and fast-moving pulp story, with a backdrop of a technologically advanced society on the decline. The story jumps from the Earth to the moon to Mercury and finally to a "solarion," a station that hovers over a sunspot to process the energy of the sun itself. It's all wild and improbable and quite irresistible stuff, if you're game. I highly recommend it.

This Harness classic form the forties is like the best novel A. E. van Vogt never wrote - the same universe-spanning fantastic visions, but more humanistic. Nobody writes things like this anymore. Why dont somebody reprint it? Later Harness work is quite good too, original and very unlike this.

This was the first Sci-Fi book I ever read, and it caused me to become a Sci-Fi fan. Even after all these years, its amazing how often I think about the amazing plot and complex twists and turns and mysteries involved in this story. A must have for any fan of well developed plots and mysterious, heroic main characters. A beautifully painted future world puts a cap on this already enthralling book